Nation's Deepest Coal Mine Now Ranks Among Deadliest

By DAVID FIRESTONE

Published: September 26, 2001

BROOKWOOD, Ala., Sept. 25—
The low-sulfur coal coveted by power plants exists in abundance beneath the green ridges near this central Alabama town, but to get it, miners must take the longest elevator ride in the country to a dark and risky office: 175 stories straight down, past cracks and crevices packed with highly volatile methane gas.

For all the elaborate wind tunnels and gas-collection systems that have been pioneered here, a spark and a cave-in in the wrong place can create a fireball of enormous intensity. Alabama miners have long known that their jobs here were considered more dangerous than similar jobs elsewhere in the country, and 13 of their families learned painfully on Sunday the precise nature of the peril underground.

When the roof fell near a battery charger in the nation's deepest mine that afternoon, the resulting explosion killed three of six nearby workers instantly. The mine's operator, Jim Walter Resources, confirmed today that nine other men who ran to their aid were killed a few minutes later in a subsequent blast, and a thirteenth man who was rescued died of his burns on Monday. The accident thus became the nation's deadliest mine calamity since 1984.

Today, federal rescue officials and teams from the mine's operator were unable for a second day to get near the section of Blue Creek Mine No. 5 where the second blast occurred. Fires are believed to be still blazing in the tunnel 2,100 feet below ground, and levels of methane gas were too intense for rescuers to approach, said Kyle Parks, a spokesman for the company.

Recovery workers began to flood the affected area with water today to extinguish the fires, but it could be weeks or months before production resumes and more than 400 workers can again be paid.

Miners who gathered at the local United Mine Workers union hall today know exactly what their colleagues went through, a risk that men in this area have taken for decades in exchange for good, steady jobs that pay around $20 an hour.

As mining technology has become more advanced and robotic, fewer men are needed in the tunnels, but those that remain have learned to become very, very careful after they take their four-minute ride to the bottom.

''It's like no other job on earth,'' said Aaron Bowens, 44, a third-generation miner who has spent 15 years working beneath Brookwood, where he lives. ''I've seen miners from other places who have never been claustrophobic in their lives walk off the job on their first day when they realize how deep it gets. If you thought about the danger every day, you just couldn't go to work.''

Federal inspectors are in the mines almost every day, along with state officials and union and company safety workers making sure that odorless methane gas is diluted with fresh air forced down from above.

In part because of its great depth, this mine is one of the gassiest in the country, but Jim Walter Resources has become known in the industry as a pioneer in extracting the methane -- both to be sold as natural gas, and to make the coal mining possible.

''Jim Walter is a first-class outfit that puts a premium on safety and getting that methane out of there,'' said Charles D. Haynes, a former miner who now teaches civil and environmental engineering at the University of Alabama in nearby Tuscaloosa. ''But don't kid yourself -- it's a very hostile environment for those men.''

This was the first underground fatal accident that has occurred in Mine No. 5, though there have been three deaths since 1995 at nearby Mine No. 4 -- from electrocution, a fall and asphyxiation. In all, the company had a higher accident rate than the industry as a whole last year, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, but the state's accident rate has improved from 1996, when Alabama's mine accident rate was far higher than the rest of the country.

That is generally attributed to improved methods for removing the methane, which were first developed here. The mine operator spends up to a year removing methane before the tunnels are dug, then extracts more just ahead of the mining machine and again after the coal has been removed. The sale of the methane as natural gas has become a substantial part of Jim Walter's revenues.

But Dr. Haynes said the methane -- the natural byproduct of the decay of vegetable matter that also produces coal -- had been compressed in the coal for thousands of years, and was released in large, high-pressure streams when there were cave-ins. That apparently happened on Sunday, through a series of events that began when parts of a roof felt near a battery charger, causing sparks that ignited released methane.

Miners, who work in tunnels 20 feet wide by 6 feet tall, say they are not looking forward to resuming work near the accident site. But they know they will, because it is their livelihood and their identity.

''It gets in your blood, and you tell yourself it won't happen to you,'' said Sidney Atchison, who is 50 and has been a laborer in the mines for 19 years. ''I mean, it's not the only dangerous job in the world. You can be sitting in an office in New York, and look what can happen to you.''